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Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Writing - part xxx642 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Truth Conclusions

02 April 2024, Writing - part xxx642 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Parts of Reality, Truth Conclusions

Announcement: Delay, my new novels can be seen on the internet, but my primary publisher has gone out of business—they couldn’t succeed in the past business and publishing environment.  I’ll keep you informed, but I need a new publisher.  More information can be found at www.ancientlight.com.  Check out my novels—I think you’ll really enjoy them.

Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.

I’m using this novel as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel published. I’ll keep you informed along the way.

Today’s Blog: To see the steps in the publication process, visit my writing websites http://www.sisteroflight.com/.

The four plus one basic rules I employ when writing:

1. Don’t confuse your readers.

2. Entertain your readers.

3. Ground your readers in the writing.

4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.

     4a. Show what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage of the novel.

5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.

6. The initial scene is the most important scene.

 

These are the steps I use to write a novel including the five discrete parts of a novel:

 

1.     Design the initial scene

2.     Develop a theme statement (initial setting, protagonist, protagonist’s helper or antagonist, action statement)

a.      Research as required

b.     Develop the initial setting

c.      Develop the characters

d.     Identify the telic flaw (internal and external)

3.     Write the initial scene (identify the output: implied setting, implied characters, implied action movement)

4.     Write the next scene(s) to the climax (rising action)

5.     Write the climax scene

6.     Write the falling action scene(s)

7.     Write the dénouement scene

I finished writing my 31st novel, working title, Cassandra, potential title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors.  The theme statement is: Deirdre and Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult mysteries, people, and events.

 

I finished writing my 34th novel (actually my 32nd completed novel), Seoirse, potential title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.  The theme statement is: Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.     

Here is the cover proposal for Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment




Cover Proposal

The most important scene in any novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to the rising action. I am continuing to write on my 30th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29th novel, working title Detective.  I finished writing number 31, working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior.  I just finished my 32nd novel and 33rd novel: Rose: Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment.

How to begin a novel.  Number one thought, we need an entertaining idea.  I usually encapsulate such an idea with a theme statement.  Since I’m writing a new novel, we need a new theme statement.  Here is an initial cut.

 

For novel 30:  Red Sonja, a Soviet spy, infiltrates the X-plane programs at Edwards AFB as a test pilot’s administrative clerk, learns about freedom, and is redeemed.

 

For Novel 32:  Shiggy Tash finds a lost girl in the isolated Scottish safe house her organization gives her for her latest assignment: Rose Craigie has nothing, is alone, and needs someone or something to rescue and acknowledge her as a human being.

 

For novel 33, Book girl:  Siobhàn Shaw is Morven McLean’s savior—they are both attending Kilgraston School in Scotland when Morven loses everything, her wealth, position, and friends, and Siobhàn Shaw is the only one left to befriend and help her discover the one thing that might save Morven’s family and existence.

 

For novel 34:  Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.

 

For novel 35: Eoghan, a Scottish National Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires a new life and perhaps love.

 

Here is the scene development outline:

 

1. Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)

2. Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)

3. Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and develop the tension and release.

4. Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.

5. Write the release

6. Write the kicker

          

Today:  Let me tell you a little about writing.  Writing isn’t so much a hobby, a career, or a pastime.  Writing is a habit and an obsession.  We who love to write love to write. 

 

If you love to write, the problem is gaining the skills to write well.  We want to write well enough to have others enjoy our writing.  This is important.  No one writes just for themselves the idea is absolutely irrational and silly.  I can prove why.

 

In the first place, the purpose of writing is communication—that’s the only purpose.  Writing is the abstract communication of the mind through symbols.  As time goes by, we as writers gain more and better tools and our readers gain more and better appreciation for those tools and skills—even if they have no idea what they are. 

 

We are in the modern era.  In this time, the action and dialog style along with the push of technology forced novels into the form of third person, past tense, action and dialog style, implying the future.  This is the modern style of the novel.  I also showed how the end of literature created the reflected worldview.  We have three possible worldviews for a novel: the real, the reflected, and the created.  I choose to work in the reflected worldview.

 

Why don’t we go back to the basics and just writing a novel?  I can tell you what I do, and show you how I go about putting a novel together.  We can start with developing an idea then move into the details of the writing. 

 

Ideas.  We need ideas.  Ideas allow us to figure out the protagonist and the telic flaw.  Ideas don’t come fully armed from the mind of Zeus.  We need to cultivate ideas. 

 

1.     Read novels. 

2.     Fill your mind with good stuff—basically the stuff you want to write about. 

3.     Figure out what will build ideas in your mind and what will kill ideas in your mind.

4.     Study.

5.     Teach. 

6.     Make the catharsis. 

7.     Write.

 

The development of ideas is based on study and research, but it is also based on creativity.  Creativity is the extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form.  It is a reflection of something new created with ties to the history, science, and logic (the intellect).  Creativity requires consuming, thinking, and producing.

 

If we have filled our mind with all kinds of information and ideas, we are ready to become creative.  Creativity means the extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form.  Literally, we are seeing the world in a new way, or actually, we are seeing some part of the world in a new way. 

 

The beginning of creativity is study and effort.  We can use this to extrapolate to creativity.  In addition, we need to look at recording ideas and working with ideas.

 

With that said, where should we go?  Should I delve into ideas and creativity again, or should we just move into the novel again?  Should I develop a new protagonist, which, we know, will result in a new novel.  I’ve got an idea, but it went stale.  Let’s look at the outline for a novel again:

 

1.      The initial scene

2.     The rising action scenes

3.     The climax scene

4.     The falling action scene(s)

5.     The dénouement scene(s)

   

The initial scene is the most important scene and part of any novel.  To get to the initial scene, you don’t need a plot, you need a protagonist.

 

My main focus, at the moment, is marketing my novels.  That specifically means submissions.  I’m aiming for agents because if I can get an agent, I think that might give me more contacts with publishers plus a let up in the business.  I would like to write another novel, but I’m holding off and editing one of my older novels Shadow of Darkness.  I thought that novel would have fit perfectly with one potential agent who said they were looking for Jewish based and non-Western mythology in fantasy.  That’s exactly what Shadow of Darkness is, but they passed on it.  In any case, I’m looking for an agent who will fall in love with my writing and then promote it to publishers.  That’s the goal.

Let’s keep writing to entertain ourselves with the knowledge that what will entertain a great reader, like we are, will entertain other readers.  That’s our only hope.

Let’s look back at entertainment and writing.  As I wrote before, writing is communication.  What we imagine is that we simply communicate words from one person to another, but the reality, especially in writing, is we are communicating word pictures.  Here’s the problem. 

I imagine the world structurally in my mind.  This is where my reality lies and this is where my imagination lies.  Until someone invents a mind viewer, you will never know what is really going on in someone’s mind or thoughts.  In fact, the Greeks, as well as most real philosophers would argue that even then, you will never really know a person’s thoughts.  Thoughts live in the realm of the unreal world.  Let’s look at little at the Greek worldview—that’s the worldview basis for Western civilization.

In the Greek and Western worldview, the human being is made up of sarx, psuche, and pneuma.  Things get a little complicated from here, but in Greek thought, sarx is the flesh—that’s easy, the physical body.  Psuche is the mind or thoughts.  In the Greek worldview a human can’t stop thinking—if they do, they are just an animal.  The psuche is the unconscious breath—there is no thinking to take an unconscious breath, but in the Greek worldview what makes a human different from an animal is that humans always think.  They think, therefore they are.  Then there is pneuma.

Pneuma is the conscious breath.  This is freewill to the Greeks.  The unconscious breath is automatic and thinking—the conscious breath is accomplished through freewill, and action of the mind.  All this is very interesting to me, and should be important to any thinking person—two-thirds of our being, according to the Greeks is not found in the real world—although the conscious and the unconscious breath are physical things, they represent very nonphysical ideas—thoughts (reasoning) and freewill.  I guess I’ll look at the unreal in the real world, next.

So, what is real and what is unreal?  If you are familiar with classic philosophy and theology as well as Western Civilization, you should know, but let me remind you.  The Greeks invented the three ways to know truth.  There is a forth that came out of the legal system, but it’s not effective in knowing truth as much as defining harm.  In any case, the three methods to know truth are, in order of invention, the historic method, reason or logic (philosophy), and the scientific method.  These were the bread and butter of knowledge and education until about 1900, but they have fallen by the wayside, mostly because they are absolutely true.  Let’s define them a little.

In the first place, the historical method is used to prove as well as define things that can’t be repeated.  Historical events and occurrences cannot be repeated, they are defined by time.  We could write that the historical method is used to prove and define things that are bound by time—this would be absolutely true.  The Greeks notably invented the historical method to record history.  Their purpose was to record historical events for the future.  Now, even the Greeks, with tongue in cheek, argued the Hebrews actually started the historical method, however, their purpose was different, and so the Greeks made the claim in history and it stuck. 

The Hebrews purpose was to record the revelation of their God in the fabric of their world and history and not to record human history necessarily.  That’s one of the main reason the Greeks get the claim of the invention of the historical method.  However, the Greeks honored and venerated the Hebrews for their very ancient historical writings. 

What can you do with the historical method?  In the first place, the historical method is the only method to prove history.  Usually, we write about evidence and the best evidence is the eyewitness source in history.  There are three levels of historical witness, primary (eyewitness), secondary (hearsay), and tertiary (anything else). 

A primary witness is one that directly observes something in time and place—then they record it in some fashion.  Usually the recording in the past has been writing but in the modern world we have videos, pictures, and other recordings. 

A secondary witness is one that takes the record or account of a primary witness and writes or records it.  This is usually a newspaper or other account where the secondary writes down the report of the primary witness.  As an example, in the assassination of Lincon, the written or recorded account of his wife, a primary witness would be a primary source.  The account by a journalist from an interview of Lincoln’s wife would be a secondary witness.

In the historical method, a primary witness always trumps any secondary or tertiary witness unless there is any direct and obvious discrepancies between the accounts.  We don’t mean simply things a person decides not to believe, but rather falsifications based on real data.  Even this is difficult to define because primary source witness is always accorded the benefit of the doubt in the eyewitness to an account.  If you happened to have a multiple of eyewitnesses and the account of one significantly differed from the others, you might consider dropping the one, but this is usually a problem of modern jurisprudence and not history.  I guess I’ll get into this, next.

Yes, the historical method is also called the legal method—it’s used to convict people in a court of law and to punish them if they are found guilty.  It specifically determines guilt in the judicial system, and it therefore one of the most important parts of law and society.  The historical method is also notably used to prove history.

As I wrote, in the historical method, we have eyewitness, secondary or hearsay witness, and tertiary or other witness.  Obviously, in normal jurisprudence only an eyewitness or eyewitness and direct evidence is allowed.  Hearsay (secondary) and tertiary is never supposed to be allowed in a judicial trail. 

In historical evidence, we can’t be quite as picky.  In history, the number of eyewitness accounts is increasing, but in the past, we only have so many—still plenty, but only so many.  Let’s get to the meat of the matter.  No historian uses tertiary sources for history.  They only use primary (eyewitness) and secondary sources.  A tertiary source is a history book.  Historians do write all kinds of history books meanwhile making money off sources that might be questionable—because, you see, history isn’t about opinions.  History is about facts.  The facts are wrapped up in the binder called witness and evidence.  Let’s look at witness and evidence.

We did already see the three levels of witness: primary (eyewitness), secondary (hearsay), and tertiary (everything else).  Safe to say, in historical proof, the primary always trumps the secondary which always trumps the tertiary.  That’s the way it works.  This is the prime directive.  No tertiary or secondary is ever held above a primary.  No tertiary is ever held about a secondary.  That’s the main and basic rule.  An eyewitness always trumps, and it really doesn’t matter is the historian agrees with the account or not—the account, in history is the account in history.  There are a couple of other tests we use to determine historical value and proof within the three categories of witness.  I’ll look at those, next.

Okay, I haven’t hit logic yet, but we will get there.  At the moment, I’m looking at some advanced ways to understand the historical method—you know, the method we use to put people in prison as well as the means to prove nonrepeatable events.

When we look at historical evidence, we have two tests we apply.  The first is the bibliographical tests.  These relate to how well especially historical records (writings mostly) have been passed down to us in history.  We look at when the work was written and the earliest copy we have—that’s the elapsed time test.  You need to know, if you don’t, we have no original documents from antiquity.  Antiquity is actually dated at around 600 AD.  So, we have zero originals with a few exceptions of historical documents from before 600 AD.  600 AD is the mark because we have a couple of copies of the Koran that are reputed originals.  There are problems with these documents, but that’s another account.  Plus, the Koran is not history at all—it’s a quartiery document of a person’s opinions about their god.  I brought up a forth witness I like to call quatriery because with primary you have an eyewitness, with secondary, you have the account of an eyewitness from a secondary source, tertiary is history, but everything else—except opinion.  Quatriery, is my term for opinion or really fiction writing.  There is no history in quatriery.  For example, the Book of the Dead, which we have five very different copies from Egyptian tombs are a quartriery source.  Why?  They are spells you use after you are dead.  There is zero history in the Book of the Dead.  There are only spells, written by the living, for dead mummies.  This is a quatriery document.  Now, back to the elapsed time test.

Most historical documents in antiquity have a lapse of about 1000 years from the original to the first remaining copy.  That’s because someone took the time to copy the original and then make other copies until our last and latest copy.  I do need to point out some of the best historical lapse times are found in the New Testament documents.  Less than 100 years elapsed between the originals and the earliest copies.  Alas, they are still copies.

The second bibliographical test is the test of the number of extant copies.  It’s just statistics to figure out that the more copies you have, and the shorter the lapse time, the closer the copies you have will be to the originals.  I’ll point out that for most works in antiquity, the best we have is one copy.  Some few have more, like three copies.  A few, like the Odyssey, have up to 600 copies.  The Odyssey isn’t history, alas.  For the New Testament, we have 24,000 copies, and that’s the best of all historical documents in all of history—thought you’d like to know.  I’ll look at the other two tests, next.

We have the bibliographical tests we use for historical evidence they are the number of copies which tells us how well the text was conveyed (copied) and the lapse from the original to the earliest copy which assures us of the accuracy of the text.  The next two tests look at other literature (writings and other evidence) to tell us about the accuracy of the history in them.

These are the internal and the external tests.  The internal test looks at the claims and quality of the text.  For example, I mentioned The Egyptian Book of the Dead.  These don’t claim to be history.  They claim to the spells used by the dead when they are dead.  They are not history.  We have five copies found in tombs, mostly mummy’s wrappings.  The five are significantly different.  They don’t come close to passing any internal test at all.  In fact, they are, as I mentioned quatriery documents because they are not history at all, and can’t really tell us much about the history or times of the Egyptian people.  Unfortunately, there are quite a few documents like this in history. 

As I wrote, the Greeks make the claim of the invention of the historical method and we mark their writing from about 500 BC as the beginning of historical writing and evidence.  In reality, the Greeks acknowledged that the Hebrews really started the historical method with the writing of the Torah and the Tanakh.  Internally, the Torah and the Tanakh claim to be history and record the history of the times.  This leads us to the second test, the external test.

With the external test, we compare evidence and other historical documents from the same time, place, and witness.  Notice, with some documents this is impossible because there is just nothing else to compare it to.  It’s work noting that the degree of witness always trumps any other document.  Therefore, an eyewitness always beats out a secondary or tertiary witness.  With documents of similar internal claims, witness claims, external claims, the documents with the most copies (usually the most accurate transmission) and the least lapse time (also the most accurate transmission) beat out those that have fewer copies and more time of transmission.

That’s the historical method in a nutshell.  This is the first means to know truth.  Before I move to the second means, logic, I should explain why the average person and you likely weren’t taught this wonderful method of knowing truth and also putting criminals in prison.  That’s next.

They used to teach every person in school the historical method until about 1900.  In 1900, the historical method was taken out of many of the schools.  Because it wasn’t taught in the general government controlled schools, the private schools generally stopped teaching it too.  The reason they stopped teaching the historical method is that it proves certain history—in fact, it proves history, and some people didn’t like that.

Let’s go ahead and move to the second method to know truth—that’s reasoning or the logical method.  The historical method came with writing and literature, however, the logical method came with philosophy.

In the first place, you must understand there are things that can’t be proven using the historical method or the scientific method.  Those things age math, thoughts, emotions, the supernatural, and other things that are not usually found in the ge.  Let me explain the Greek worldview.

In the Greek view, there is the Plenum of Everything, within this is the Kosmos (that which was created).  Within the Kosmos is the philosophia (what man can know), and within the philosophia is the ge.  The ge is what can be measured using the scientific method.  We will get to this and that, next.

The philosophia includes everything that man can know—understand and comprehend.  It also includes the ge (the real world).  There are parts of the philosophia that are not real and that are not measurable in a scientific sense. 

Most obviously, philosophy and reason are not measurable or real in the same way that the laws of the natural world are.  Philosophy and reason follow rules, but they represent ideas, and ideas are not real until they are real.  Here’s an example, in 1984, I invented the electronic book.  It was in one of my novels, but I took it further and attempted to get an electronic book developed and patented.  Unfortunately, you can’t patent what you can’t make.  In 1984 and even later, the capability to make an electronic book didn’t exist.  It was an idea, my idea, but it could not be made real with the technology of the time.  Today, almost everyone has an electronic book.  The electronic book is a real thing and exists in the ge.  This is just one example of an idea that exists in philosophia but not in reality (the ge). 

There are many other things that don’t exist and will never exist in the ge that are part of the philosophia.  One of these is logic or reasoning.  I also called it philosophy, logic and reasoning fall into this category and most specifically what we call math in all its varieties are part of the philosophia but not part of the ge (reality).  How can that be. 

Let’s start with logic and reasoning in math.  Logic is used to prove mathematical theorems.  If you remember from geometry and trigonometry, theorems are provable using symbols and symbolic logic.  They exist in philosophia, but they don’t really exist in the ge or reality.  They are a logical proof that proves a mathematical concept based in symbolic concepts or ideas.  It might be difficult to conceive that all math is unreal, but you should be able to grasp that there is no perfect right angle or triangle.  The idea is a mathematical symbol and construct.  It doesn’t exist in reality.  All math is like this.  For example, the equation for the gravitational acceleration of an object gives a perfect answer every time, but it is impossible for this to happen in reality.  No matter how perfect your experiment, you can’t get an answer for any of the equation for gravitational acceleration to come out better than some standard deviation of the actual answer.  Logic, reasoning, ideas, math, equations, numbers…there are irrational numbers like pi and the natural log.  There are imaginary and irrational numbers.  Are these numbers real?  They are real in mathematics, that is, they are real in the sense that they exist in the philosophia, but they don’t really exist except as symbols in the ge.  They can’t be measured.  They can kind of be observed.  You can see pi every time you look at any perfect or unit circle, but there has never been a perfect or unit circle in the world.  Oh well.  I hope you are getting it.

There are some other things obviously in the philosophia but not also in the ge.  One is emotions and the other is the supernatural.  We need to be careful here.  The supernatural I am writing about is not God or those being and creatures who are supposed to be eternal and outside of the creation.  Those are beings in the plenum of everything.  I am writing about the supernatural beings who are within the creation.  These are created beings.  Quite perfectly, in the Greek worldview all the gods where created somehow.  That’s part of the problem with the Greek pantheon as well as the pantheon of most religions.  Their god or gods were created.  They exist within the Kosmos and at least within the philosophia—otherwise humans couldn’t understand them. 

We’ll move on from here about logic, but that’s what I want you to understand, the Greeks felt like they needed logic to understand the concepts in the philosophia that were not also in the ge… and indeed they did.

Yes, we are at logic.  Logic is the second means to know truth.  The Greeks used logic mainly in philosophy, but also in math.  However, their idea of math and ours would be a little different.  They didn’t really have math symbols or symbolic math like we do—their math used logic and somehow was evident to them using real items.  They still understood the concept of math outside of reality—it was somehow very clear to them.  The Greeks quickly moved logic into the realm of the supernatural.  That is to the proof of things that they could not fully observe in the with get (physical universe).  Even today, as I wrote, logic is used mainly to prove ideas that are outside of the physical universe—like math.

Also, like math, we can use logic to prove things and especially ideas outside of the physical universe.  Math is the best example, but philosophy and theology are both controlled by logic.  Let’s write about philosophy a little.

If you didn’t know, the main purpose for philosophy from its invention in about 400 to 350 BC was to prove god as well as a number of other ideas that could not be shown to work in the physical world.  Emmanual Kant developed a proof that the not god can’t exist.  You can never prove a true only a not false (remember your geometry).  Since Emmanual Kant, philosophy has pretty much gone off the rails.  Numerous philosophers tried to disprove Kant’s theorem, but no one has come close, so based on philosophy, God must exist.  This came directly out of logic, and it’s one of the reasons the schools stopped teaching logic.  Fortunately, they can’t stop teaching Boolean math and some schools still teach rhetorical logic—so it hasn’t died yet, but many modern philosophers don’t understand the basis for their craft or the current state of their craft.  As I noted, since Kant proved the not god can’t exist, the world of philosophy has gone off the rails.

Now, logic is one of the most powerful ways to know truth.  You can really prove things that are not measurable or in some cases not observable in the physical world (ge).  This is the great power of logic, and as I noted, logic is the basis for all math. 

There are other things we use logic to prove—mainly emotions and thoughts.  I’ll look at this, next, and I want to go through the history that relates directly to logic and the historical method.

Although modern science is trying to equate all emotions and thoughts to the physical—they can’t and I predict, they never will.  If you have a Greek worldview, which is both Western civilization and Christianity (as well as pagan belief) you can easily see why.  Emotions and thoughts are part of the psyche (psuche) and pneuma in Greek and Western thought.  The sarx is the physical, so the psuche (thoughts) and the pneuma (free will) are components that exist in the philosophia and not in the ge (physical world).  This is easy to prove.  As the Greeks knew, it is impossible to know a person’s thoughts or emotions.  Even if they tell you, you don’t know if they are telling the truth.  You can use logic to tease out some ideas about their thoughts and emotions, but be careful—great actors can fake anything (which means most movie actors are crap actors). 

For example, if someone is crying, how do you know what their emotion is.  How do you know they aren’t faking it?  A child learns very early to turn on the tears—it’s a learned response.  Even if you ask—why are you sad.  They might not be sad at all—they might be angry, jealous, afraid, and all.  Take your pick—they could be happy.  In any case, we try to determine the truth of thoughts and emotions using logic.  If a friend says they are sad because they lost a loved one—that’s a clue to the truth of their emotions.  If they then turn around and ask for a donation, you might get another clue and logical link.

The Greeks understood this dichotomy between emotions, thoughts, appearance, and what people hide within.  They used logic to determine the truth of each situation, but they realized very well, it is impossible to know what is in another person’s mind or heart.  This is the great concept about emotions and thoughts that still drives modern literature as well as all civilizations—unfortunately, most civilizations don’t have logic to help them—unless the people are trained.  Literature and especially Western literature helps train the mind in logic.  It can be applied to other cultures, but be careful.  Where logic doesn’t have a footing, the irrational takes hold.  We could look at this in popular culture—perhaps we will.

Before I move over to the scientific method, I’d like to write to you about how religion affects and affected all cultures and societies—it bears on the means to know truth as well as on ideas and especially writing.

If we look at the outline of religion in the history of all societies, we see a pattern that is really interesting.  The natural history of religion looks like this:

1.     Animism

2.     Pantheonic paganism

3.     Mystereum

4.     Gnosticism

Animism is the idea that spirits cause the movement and life of every moving and living thing.  Thus tree all contain a spirit, animals all have a spirit, rivers have a spirit, fire and the sky are spirits, planets and stars are spirits.  Everything that moves and appears to have life are moved by spirits.  The idea that spirits cause actions in the world comes out of people who don’t comprehend natural (physical) laws.  Then something happens in a culture—they don’t develop the idea of physical laws, they invent literature (writing).

Here's where it becomes important for writers and writing.  Before literacy there are no words to imagine in the brain.  Word themselves are individual thoughts, but not archetypes or forms.  I should note that animism comes with language, but since there is no recorded history we aren’t certain about this.  What we are certain about is that once a culture invents writing suddenly word that can’t exist without writing become very important.  For example, “love,” you can’t draw a picture of love.  Love is a verb and a noun, and love can’t exist without being able to write the word.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, when concepts like love are created through the written word, the idea must be conveyed through the society in some way.  That some way is usually through gods and goddesses.  This is why Pantheonic Paganism is directly connected to the invention of writing.  Writing allows concepts that can’t exist in a verbal culture to suddenly exist—the gods makes these ideas real to the illiterate of the culture.  Thus, we have a goddess or a god of love.  The same is true for many other words and ideas that can’t exist in a verbal only culture.  In addition, complex ideas and skills become the basis for gods and goddesses, and gods and goddesses take on the qualities of spirits especially those connected directly to natural (physical) laws.  Zeus and lightening or fire is a perfect example of this.  What we see is the Pantheon of the gods having these new gods and goddesses added to represent literary, physical, and cultural skills, and these new gods and goddesses fill the place of the new words invented by writing.  The society has moved from animism to Pantheonic paganism almost over night.  Then something amazing happens—the culture invents logic and reasoning.

Logic and reasoning is usually seen in a society as philosophy, and out of philosophy comes Mystereum.  Out of philosophy comes a new type of religion?  You betcha.  Literacy brings new ideas and concepts that are impossible with only a verbal language.  Literacy also brings the ability to think in new ways.  It’s not just thinking about love—it’s thinking about ideas like love in terms of the world.  Suddenly, there are secrets within the world that must be explored.  Those secrets are defined by these literary ideas.  I’ll explain about the Mystereums next.

Mystereums are all about secrets.  In fact, the Mystereums began around 500 BC about the time the historical method began and philosophy as an idea started to ramp up.  You would think the mystery of the Mystereum would be based in science, but it wasn’t.  We only know the secrets of a few Mystereums, because they kept them such great secrets, but the ones we do know are based in math and logic as well as just a general secret.  The oldest secret we know about is the secret of the Demeter Mystereum.  This was a sword and a grain of wheat in a casket.  How these were used in the Mystereum, we don’t know, but this might be the basis for Jesus saying about a grain of wheat and death.  In any case, the mystery of this Mystereum was likely the mystery of plant growth, a foreshadowing of the scientific method in some degree.

The other two secrets we know are directly connected to logic and philosophy.  The first is the Osirian Mystereum—that was pi, like the irrational number and the circumference of a unit circle 2*pi*r.  Pi is one of those math concepts that doesn’t really exist in the physical world.  How this Mystereum showed or displayed this secret no one knows--we just know the secret.  This shows directly the way logic was integrated into the Mystereums.  The Pythagorean Mystereum is even more interesting.  The secret of the Pythagorean Mystereum was, wait for it, the Pythagorean theorem.  We have no idea how they displayed or even showed this secret without symbolic math, but they did.  All three of these Mystereums showed some other qualities that are important in both religion and the development of the world.

In the first place, the name of the Mystereum was always the god or the founder of the Mystereum, thus Osirus, Demeter, and Pythagoras.  Why this is important is the fifth sect of Judaism in the first century was called teen Hodos (the way)—the Greeks called it Christians after their God and founder (Jesus Christ).  In addition, the secret of teen Hodos was: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.  A secret that was shared to all.  The Jewish sect, teen Hodos, took the world by storm, mostly because it looked like a Mystereum to the Greeks and Romans and second because it met the needs of the people, in a religious sense.  I could also write because it was based on a unique historical event that could be proven by the historical method—which is the reason the historical method isn’t taught much since the 1900s.  That’s another subject, but not entirely.

I’ll make this point about religion as well.  Religion is directly connected to the development of literacy, philosophy, and as we shall see, the scientific method.  It is safe to say that without religion and the evolution of religion, a culture would not invent these very necessary skills.  It is interesting to note that Judaism and Christianity are the only religions in history that do not follow this outline of evolution.  Judaism leapt almost directly from animism to a monotheistic religion.  It looks very similar to a Mystereum with a single God, baptism (the mikvah), a meal with the deity, naming with circumcision, and all.  Christianity is not a Mystereum—it has a secret of faith that is freely shared, but it certainly looks like a Mystereum with a meal with the deity, baptism (with renaming), and a host of other similarities. 

So, although Judaism and Christianity look like Mystereums and didn’t follow the common evolution of religion, they certainly had and have appeal.  Further, Christianity caused the next evolution in Western religion, which I’ll look at next, Gnosticism.

Yes, part of the evolution of religion was caused by Christianity, however, just as literacy moved culture from animism to Pantheonic paganism and logic (philosophy) moved culture from Pantheonic paganism to Mystereum, the scientific method ushered in Gnosticism, Christianity was just the catalyst.

The Greeks invented the scientific method last of the three methods to know truth, and Aristotle is considered one of the main creators.  The scientific method is basically the means to prove things that are repeatable in the physical world (the ge, in Greek thought).  To use the scientific method, something must be measurable and repeatable.  If it can’t meet these two criteria, you can’t use the scientific method.  This is why historical events cant be proven with the scientific method—it must be repeatable.  Notice that this means time can be a variable, but time is usually not a factor except in the sense of the repeatability of the event.  In other words, we look for a defined event that we can measure within the constraint of time.  We use statistics to find a unique value that represents the measure from an experiment.  For example, if we wish to determine the acceleration of gravity on the surface of the earth, we complete repeated drops of a specific item and time its fall over a set distance.  We use a mathematical formula to solve for the gravitational acceleration with distance as a constant and time as the variable.  We repeat the experiment many times, and actually a number of times determined by statistical analysis to gain a confidence interval.  Usually, we are looking for a confidence of 99% or better.  The number of repetitions of the experiment relate directly to the confidence.  In addition, the results will give us a statistical distribution within a standard deviation.  We find the average and central value for the experiment to discover something close to the value for the acceleration due to gravity.  Notice, we should accomplish this in a vacuum (to get rid of friction due to air), multiple places (elevations, latitudes, longitudes), multiple temperatures, multiple weights (it shouldn’t make any difference), multiple shapes (should make any difference, multiple times (of course).  The point is that except with accidental measures of results, even with the most controlled experiment in the world, the results, based on the quality and capability of the measurement equipment, will never be the same.  You will get a statistical deviation which is calculated as a standard deviation around a mean.  This is how every experiment in the scientific method works.  This is what we are supposed to be teaching children about the scientific method in the schools.  If you remember repeatable, measurable, and the use of statistics to determine some mean measure—you understand the use and function of the scientific method.  Notice also, the scientific method required the invention of logic to give a mathematical basis to the experiment as well as the historical method to record the results.  Pretty slick.

Now, how this turned into Gnosticism is a question of empiricism versus reason.  It started early, but continues today.

When a culture invents the scientific method, basically the understanding of the physical laws in the world, they can move to Gnosticism.  Gnosticism is the idea that knowledge itself and an understanding of the universe leads to God and salvation.  This happens when a culture begins to realize that natural laws and not spirits or the gods make everything work.  This wasn’t a problem for Christianity or Judaism because both presume that God created—the kosmos (creation) that God created was self sufficient and both independent and dependent on God.  It ran on the natural laws created by God.  The problem was that the rise of Christianity along with the invention of the scientific led to the idea that the entire creation (kosmos) was all inclusive and could be completely defined by natural law.  As we know, the Greeks never thought this.  They presumed the plenum of everything with the creation (kosmos) within it.  The creation was indeed defined by natural law, but God superseded and oversaw all.

The Gnostics presumed they could understand God by understanding knowledge and natural law.  This is impossible because God is outside of the creation.  However, this is a basic idea in Gnosticism.  Further, the modern Gnostics are the empiricists.  There was once a great fight between the empiricists and the logisticians.  This was the great fight at the end of the age of reason which defined the modern world—it wasn’t for the best. 

The logisticians proposed the world (creation) could be fully defined by reason, while the empiricists proposed the world (creation) could be fully defined by empirical measures.  We know that reason proves the empiricists were and are completely wrong.  There are real things that exist in the kosmos that can’t be measured.  However, we are living in a Gnostic world today where the ignorant presume the world and everything it in can be defined by knowledge and specifically by empirical measures.  There is no room for the supernatural, thoughts, emotions, logic, reasoning, or math—however, the empiricists don’t understand this.  They just thought they were excluding the supernatural. 

So, what is important to know is that Gnosticism is the religion of the world today.  There is still the Mystereums and the interesting religions Judaism and Christianity that look like Mystereums, but really aren’t.  It is also important to know the three ways to know truth: the historical method, logic, and the scientific method.  There is a forth method to know truth that was developed in jurisprudence during the Twentieth Century.  This is called the harm matrix.  I’ll discuss this next.

Before I get to the forth means to know truth, I need to relate the classical means to know truth, the historical method, logic, and the scientific method back to writing.  My main point from the beginning is that these concepts are critical to writing.  The reason is because writing is part of the basis and genesis of the three means to know truth, and writing is a symbolic and derived means to communicate.

Just as without writing you can’t have a word like love, there are millions of other ideas that can’t exist without writing.  The reason is that writing and especially fiction writing is a transformation of thoughts into words which become symbols on paper (or electronically).  These symbols are turned back into words which are then turned into ideas in the mind of the reader.  Can you see the writer and the reader are going through multiple transformations of thoughts and ideas to get them onto paper and then back into the mind of the readers.  This is why logic and reasoning, as well as euphemism and figures of speech are so important in writing and reading. 

The writer doesn’t just reflect the world as it is—the writer reflects the world within the limits of words and makes word pictures to convey this reflection to the reader.  A scientist might write:

The earth rotated to produce the dawn in Wichita, Kansas.

A writer might write:

The sun rose over Wichita.

Or a writer might write:

The sky candle leapt up across the prairie horizon.

One is a technical treatise.  One is a simple idea.  The last is a euphemism and figure of speech.  Each conveys the idea of the sun rising, but each is a different word picture for the reader to process.  That’s it.  Processing.

The writer processes a picture of the world (setting, action, and dialog) into a word picture.  In developing this word picture, the writer must take into account the way the reader will interpret and develop it in his or her own mind.  The writing process isn’t just writing down setting, action, and dialog but turning setting, action, and dialog into word pictures with the knowledge the reader will do the same, in the opposite direction.  This is the reason for making the word pictures in the first place.  The word pictures are euphemisms and figures of speech as well as descriptive and mental pictures to help the reader see what the writer wants him or her to see.  We have moved out of the physical sphere into the sphere of logic and reasoning.  We are engaging in the use of symbols to express ideas and not just a simple reflection of any part of the physical world.  In fact, to build the physical world through symbols and ideas represented by these symbols is a process totally outside of the natural and physical world.  That’s one of the greatest problems with writing—the reader may not and will not necessarily see the same word picture the author has imagined.  The world of writing isn’t in the physical world—the world of writing is deeply imbedded in the world of logic.

This should be obvious when you reflect on the idea of turning settings, actions, and dialogs into words, then symbols, and then turning them back again in another person’s mind.  The idea of the mind should give it away.  No one sees the world in exactly the same way as another person.  If you don’t believe me look at those who have some degree of color blindness or those who taste cilantro as soap.  Who is to say that you don’t possess some nearly unmeasurable genetic disposition to color, taste, smell, feel, or hearing that makes you unique in the world.  I’d say that every person in the world sees, tastes, feels, hears, and smells the world uniquely to every other person.  That doesn’t mean that in some place in logic, like with math, pi, or other proofs on the world we can’t come to a similar or near similar view.  That’s the point of writing. 

The author builds word pictures and turns them into symbols.  He or she seeks to make word pictures that are universal and specific to his or her own creation.  The author builds these word pictures using logic, which includes the words, figures of speck, ideas, constants, universal as well as specific knowledge, specific settings (places), all kinds of descriptions and uses as well as metaphors, comparisons, and many other techniques to build a novel made of symbols (letters and grammatical marks) that a reader might read and see something similar to the original word picture.  What the readers sees is dependent on the writer as well as the interpretation of the reader.  That’s not to say the readers will each get a completely different idea.  This comes under the ideas of the scientific method.  The readers will fall into a classic distribution.  If the writer was good at his craft, you should find the mean ideas—the idea that most of the readers get out of the writing.  There are always outliers—can’t be helped.  Some people aren’t good readers.  Some aren’t good thinkers.  Some writers are terrible.  The skill of the writer and the reading skill of the readers do mean something.  Ultimately, the writers are writing into the area of logic and the readers are seeing the novel in the area of logic.  This is the part of the creation (kosmos) the Greeks called the philosophia.  This part of philosophia can’t exist within the ge (natural world).  The book with it’s symbols and symbolic abstractions does exist in the real world, but the word pictures don’t—they are part of the philosophia outside the physical world.  More on this, then harm.

So, the ideas in novels are more akin to mathematics than to the real world.  The fact they happen to appear like the real world isn’t the novel or the symbols but rather the author and his or her ability to capture a word picture.  The more powerful the word picture, the better the reflection of the world, so to speak.  A word picture isn’t really a reflection of the world as much as it is a reflection of the author’s impression of the world.  It isn’t the world at all, it is a set of symbols that reflect other symbols, called words, that happen to be put together in an artistic way.  This makes a novel more akin to a painting and possibly an abstract painting at that.  One of the most common modern distinctions about description is not too much, but just enough.  Most authors don’t give you enough.  Victorian authors usually gave too much.  The difference isn’t that of a realistic painting versus an abstract painting, the difference is how much the reader imagines compared to how much the author writes. 

This is very important.  An author needs to realize he or she is creating word pictures and not necessarily paining the world.  The pictures provide a framework on which the author hangs the narrative, action, and the dialog.  The reader sees the world the author needs him or her to see and then places the narrative, action, and dialog into the scene.  That’s writing from the sense of the logic and reasoning within the development of the ideas.  It’s all about ideas.  In fact, the author is not just communicating words, but ideas to the reader.  This is why so many ideas may be conferred by a single statement or a single paragraph.  Indeed, the development of a parallel or an allegory is based on the idea that the ideas reflected in the word picture might make an entirely different or added word picture if seen in a slightly different way.  I used to call these levels in the writing when I was a young and inexperienced writer, but I’ve come to a different view of this, although the idea of levels in writing is still useful—it’s just not easy to define. 

If you look at Shakespeare, you will see many levels in his writing.  He uses euphemism, parallels, figures of speech, and all to bring these levels to life in his writing.  A single sentence in Shakespeare can be viewed in many ways, not all, but many.  He obviously tried to incorporate as much as possible into each statement, paragraph, and scene.  You can look at his works this way, but as I noted, it isn’t just the sentences—it is also the paragraphs, scenes, and sometimes the entire play or poem that plays with alternate and alternative meanings.  This is the power of writing.  Writing is not wholly a physical world concept.  The writing starts as an idea, outside of the real world, gets turned into word pictures, also outside of the real world, but gets placed into letters, word symbols and grammar symbols within the real world.  These word and grammar symbols are interpreted by the reader wo turns them back into word pictures and ideas.  A greater and more powerful concept that proves the real world is only a small portion of the real, I can’t imagine.

I’ll look at the forth and most modern means to know truth, next, harm.

There is a forth means to know truth.  This means was created in the Twentieth Century and was based in jurisprudence and the idea of harm.  There is actually a harm matrix.  I’ll repeat it here:

n  (10) Eternal death-separation from God

n  (9) Death

n  (8) Social (life in prison) or economic (conscription of property) death

n  (7) Maimed physically

n  (6) Maimed socially (ostracism) or economically (boycott or take away economic viability)

n  (5) Temporary injury

n  (4) Temporary social or economic injury

n  (3) Physical pain and suffering

n  Can be good

n  (2) Social or economic pain and suffering

n  Can be good

n  (1) Mental pain and suffering (makes you feel bad—is there real harm?)

n  In some cases can be good for you

n  (0) Imagined events or harm – must reject (only real harm can fall in the category of harm)

This matrix was developed when people, including the courts believed in God and the potential for eternal separation from God.  Today, the harm matrix usually starts with 9 Death.  The point of the harm matrix is to give a value to the harm caused by one person, or a group of people to another person.  Thus, if you kill someone, the harm is a 9.  Each of the other harms is lessor than causing death.  The other harms in the harm matrix are applied just like this.  Determine the harm and then the rating.  The greater the number, the greater the harm. 

The harm matrix was used in the past to determine a prison sentence or fine or both.  In the past, death was treated as a heinous crime requiring death (execution) or at least life in prison.  Notice, that life in prison is social death and not equal to death.  In this case, the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.  Notice also that although a harm of one means there is only mental pain and suffering, courts many times in the modern era award both fines and prison time for events that cause very low harm for example, hate crimes.  All real crimes are hate crimes, but for some reason, this idea has fallen out of favor.  In any case, the harm matix is valuable.  It could be more valuable if it was applied in the courts.

That’s the four and the fourth means to know truth.  I’ll get to conclusions, next.

I’ve tied some very important ideas together.  I think these are world changing ideas.  For example, whenever someone says, you can’t prove or determine truth, I always wonder what kind of education they had.  Even with just the scientific method, truth is but an experiment away.  How do they think aircraft fly, electricity gets produced, and why super tall skyscrapers can exist? 

Beyond that, they and you might ask, how can we know what happened in the past?  By the idea that you can’t prove truth, in history, for example, then was everything made up?  How can you know what happened if you can’t know truth?  In reality, as I noted before, the education system stopped teaching the historical method in around 1900 in the USA because it leads to conclusions they really didn’t like about the world and especially about Christianity.  This isn’t why I brought up the evolution of religion, but it is a sufficient reason to bring it up.

What is astounding to me is the number of educated people who have never heard of the historical method.  It’s sometimes called the legal-historical method because that is how a court proves you are guilty or not guilty.  You’d think for that reason alone, people would want to know about it.

Further, I think I proved the force of logic in the world.  Logic is something most people imagine is just philosophy or made up arguments.  They should understand that logic and those arguments are how we prove and understand mathematics (all varieties) and ideas.  In fact, logic is the absolute basis of novels and all writing because in the end, all writing is about taking ideas and turning them into word pictures and symbols.  Very few think in these terms or think much at all about how logic is tied directly to writing, but there it is. 

I further wanted you to see how all of this is connected into the evolution of religion, not to proselytize you to any specific religion or to any religion, but to show how in all human history, the inventions of religion, writing, reasoning, and science are all tied directly to religion, and no it is not circular to tie the invention of religion to the evolution of religion.  The human realization or invention of religion led to all these other critical things and ideas.  In addition, you might as well know that if you don’t follow any of the evolved religions or the odd two, Christianity and Judaism, then you most likely are a Gnostic, but that’s an entirely different discussion.

So, for the author, the most important concept is the invention of writing, with the historical method, and logic, which allows, with literacy, the description of ideas into words and symbols which others can understand and use.

I should mention the idea of harm and how it fits into the evolution of religion and writing.  I guess I will, next.

I want to write another book based on Rose and Seoirse, and the topic will be the raising of Ceridwen—at least that’s my plan.  Before I get to that, I want to write another novel about dependency as a theme.  We shall see.

 

More tomorrow.

For more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel websites:

http://www.ancientlight.com/
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com  

fiction, theme, plot, story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel, book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea, logic

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